The JASS Community:
Past and Present
Dina Abad,
Philippines, Congressional
Representative, Batanes; former Dean, Ateneo School of Government;
previously an organizer and activist with people's movements.
Ana Luisa Ahern grew up in Honduras and in the United States. After she graduated with
a degree in Art History and Visual Arts from Barnard College in New
York City, she returned to Honduras to co-found a fast-growing youth
organization called OYE which
provides education, leadership training, and capacity building to
low-income children and young adults in Honduras. In addition to
co-founding OYE, Ana Luisa, who is bilingual, has provided support
to JASS in all regions, including playing a key role in alternative
communications, documentation, graphic design, website support and
more. She studied at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, The
Netherlands, and Center for Development Studies in Trivandrum, India.
She worked closely with the Self-Employed Women’s Association in
Ahmedabad, India. An accomplished artist and photographer, Ana
brings a combination of creative and artistic talents with her
tech skills and activism to JASS' movement-building agenda.
Roxana Arroyo is a lawyer, feminist
activist and long-time human rights advocate from Costa Rica
who holds a doctorate in human rights from the Universidad Carlos III
in Madrid, Spain. She is a permanent consultant to the Women,
Justice and Gender Program of the United Nations’ Latin American
Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders
(ILANUD). Arroyo is also a visiting professor at numerous
universities including the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences
(FLASCO) in Ecuador, the University of Costa Rica and the National
University and State University in Costa Rica. She has done
extensive research on violence and discrimination. Arroyo is a
key activist in the communications strategy of the Petateras, including
editing an e-bulletin, La Petatera, which comes out 3 times
per year.
Mariela Arce, an economist and long-time
feminist human rights advocate from Panama, has been involved in a wide
range of innovative popular education and participatory democracy
efforts throughout Latin America, including training two generations of
popular educators through ALFORJA.
She served as the director of the CEASPA
(the Panamanian Center for Social Research and Action) where she is
currently a researcher and educator overseeing a variety of grassroots
transparency strategies. She is a member of the National Council of
Women in Panama and is an active leader in the Panamanian Women's
Alliance. Arce is a founding member of JASS and part of the
regional advisory team.
Patricia Ardón, a Guatemalan feminist, has been
working in development and human rights with national, regional and
international organizations for the last 30 years, including serving as
Oxfam GB’s regional representative for 7 years. She is the
founding Director of Sinergia N’oj which provides leadership training
and political support to youth, indigenous leaders, women and social
movements. Sinergia runs an innovative diploma program with the
University of San Carlos for indigenous women leaders. During the
last 10 years, Ardon’s education and political support efforts with
NGOs and movements have emphasized conflict transformation and
negotiation, organizational strengthening and gender justice. A
feminist, Ardon is a founding member of JASS and part of the regional
team.
Miriam Banda,
Zambia. Chairman of the Network of Zambian People Living with HIV/AIDS
(NZP+).
Read an interview with
Miriam Banda
Maria Gorumali Barreto (Mery), a young feminist activist from Timor L’este, is the advocacy program manager for Fokupers (Communication Forum for East Timor Women), a non governmental women’s rights organization. In this role, she facilitates gender and human rights training for women within the community, members of parliament, and policy makers. Mery also facilitates mediation cases of gender-based violence and coordinates an advocacy working group for the Domestic Violence Law. In 2004, she served as a coordinator for the second Congress of East Timor Women.
Srilatha Batliwala,
Srilatha
Batliwala , a long-time women's rights advocate, is a
Civil Society Research Fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit
Organizations, Harvard University, where her work focuses on
transnational civil society, transnational grassroots movements, and
practice-research engagement. She is also Senior
Advisor to the project on Feminist Organizations and Movements of
the Association of Women's Rights in Development (AWID) and the Chair of the Board
of the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), New
York.
Formerly, Srilatha worked as Program
Officer in the Governance and Civil Society Program of the Ford
Foundation, New York, and as head of the Women's Policy Research and
Advocacy Unit (now, the Gender Studies Unit) of the National Institute
for Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India.
Over the past 30 years, Srilatha has
combined grassroots activism, policy advocacy, research and teaching,
with experience that spans mobilizing and organizing poor urban and
rural women in India, empirical research, theory building from
grassroots practice, participation in major national and international
policy processes, and research and publishing on key issues related to
gender and development. Her most well known publications include the
book Status of Rural Women in Karnataka, and Women's
Empowerment in South Asia - Concepts and Practices.
Featured
papers:
Grassroots
Movements as Transnational Actors: Implications for Global Civil Society
Putting
power back into empowerment
The political claim
advanced by women in India via the idea of "empowerment" has been
appropriated by their adversaries and false friends. It needs to be
rewon for a fresh vision grounded in the experiences of poor women,
says Srilatha Batliwala.
Women must reassess
their political progress and achievements if they are to transform
mainstream politics. Srilatha Batliwala sizes up the challenge.
From
Evaluation to Learning in Social Change: The Challenges of 'Measuring
Development, Holding Infinity
When Rights Go Wrong
Srilatha
Batliwala's speech to the UN General Assembly, Mar 6, 2007
"...I ask you now
to ponder one of the great challenges of our times: even as global
commitment to poverty eradication and social justice has seemingly
increased, so has the belief that there are magic bullets and quick
fixes which can override the need for more fundamental but painful and
longer-term interventions. We need processes that would tackle the
basic structures of power and privilege and truly transform our
societies in favour of women and all marginalized and excluded
people..." (full
speech)
Charlotta “Lottie” Beavers brings 15 years' expertise in information and communication technologies to the position of JASS Communications and Outreach Associate. At Beavers Consulting, she developed innovative technological solutions to meet client needs, while as a social justice advocate she has served organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). An initial staff member, Charlotta helped build the AIDS/LifeCycle community – passionate fundraisers who ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise awareness and money for HIV/ AIDS services. At Blackworld newspaper, Charlotta worked as copy editor and a staff writer. Along with skills that range from technology to alternative media to outreach to photography, Charlotta holds a Bachelors degree in Comparative Literature and Africana, Latin American and Caribbean Studies from Stony Brook University and is currently pursuing a Masters in Liberal Arts at St. John’s College Graduate Institute. Her interests include deincarceration, rebellious lawyering, cooking, and dialogue.
Alejandra Bergemann is from México, D.F., and during the past 2 years she worked with
Fuerza Unida, a grassroots organization in San Antonio, Texas, whose
mission is to educate, empower and organize women workers and their
families. A graduate of Trinity University, where she
majored in Anthropology, International Studies and Spanish Literature,
she has also lived in Bangkok, Thailand, where she first began using
popular education methodologies in her work as a teacher and tutor.
Alejandra was also part of the Coordinating Committee of the Grassroots
Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), an alliance of grassroots organizations
based in the United States. Her work with GGJ ranged from promoting the
use of popular education as a tool for social justice organizing and
movement-building, to participating in the organizing of the 2006
Border Social Forum in Ciudad Juárez, México, to working to include
women’s voices and gender perspectives in the organizing work done at a
local, national, and global level.
Sindi Blose, South Africa. Sindi is
a young feminist activist who has been a grassroots organizer in Durban
with the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), widely known for mobilizing
around access to affordable treatment for all people with
HIV/AIDS. Involved with JASS since November 2007, Sindi is part
of the JASS Southern Africa core
team of political organizers and facilitators. In this role she helps
shape and move forward the JASS Southern Africa regional agenda and an
in-depth organizing process in Malawi.
Amporn Boontan is a feminist based in the Chiang Mai province of northern Thailand. She has been committed to youth empowerment and developing youth organizations from the grassroots to national and international levels for a number of years. In 1992, she began working with children in her own community to provide alternative activities in schools and develop income-generating projects with their parents. She developed and supported a community youth group focused on HIV/AIDS prevention and environmental preservation in the Chiang Mai province just two years later. From 1998 to 2000, she traveled through eight provinces in northern Thailand, training and supporting a youth project to form a Northern Child and Youth Network. She also coordinated training workshops and seminars for youth across Thailand. Amporn has served as the executive director for the Thai Youth AIDS Prevention Project and has organized training for migrant youths along the Thai-Burma border, using interactive activities for HIV/AIDS education in refugee camps. As an active member of Anjaree, Amporn contributed to the formation of FIRE, a young lesbian support group in northern Thailand.
Hope Chigudu, a Ugandan feminist living in Zimbabwe, is a long-time JASS associate and current board member. A sociologist by training, Hope holds a masters degree in development studies with a focus on women’s studies. After a start in the corporate world, feminism opened Hope’s eyes and she joined the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Zimbabwe as, she says, “a changed woman.” Later, recognizing the need for women’s autonomous spaces, she became a founding member of the Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre and Network. Her experience includes periods working with European funders and the UN, before she set up her own consulting organization. As a renowned gender equality activist/consultant, and an organizational development expert and strategist, she has supported a great many African and international justice groups, working in most African countries from Ghana to South Africa and serving on the boards the Global Fund for Women and Urgent Action and on the working committee of the African Feminist Forum.
Cindy Clark, US, has worked closely
with numerous coalitions, NGOs and community groups in the US and Latin
America to strengthen their ability to connect citizen engagement with
long-term human rights advocacy strategies. She was the Program
Coordinator for Women, Law and Development International, an NGO
committed to the promotion and defense of women's rights globally,
where she coordinated capacity-building programs in women's human
rights advocacy worldwide. She lived in Chile for four years where she
worked with PARTICIPA, an NGO dedicated to promoting participatory
democracy. She has a Bachelors degree in International Relations and
Economics and a Masters in Human and Organization Development.
Rashida Dohad,
Pakistan, is a popular educator, gender equality activist, and
citizen-centered democracy promoter. She has worked with communities
throughout Pakistan to build citizen participation and the practice of
human rights. In 2003, she co-founded the Omar Asghar Khan
Development Foundation, which has played a role in mobilizing relief
and reconstruction in the wake of the 2005 earthquake, and challenging
aid and government agencies to ensure more resources reach
people. In 2006, her organization initiated an innovative
participatory budget project to enable communities to track and demand
resources.
Read about Omar
Foundation's New Budget Initiatives.
Shereen Essof is a well-known Zimbabwean feminist, activist, popular educator and academic. As regional coordinator of JASS Southern Africa, Shereen works with the team to guide JASS women’s rights, empowerment and movement-building programs in Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and at the regional level. A sociologist by training, her work combines activism and theory, a union central to JASS strategies and approaches. Co-founder of Feminist Alternatives (FemAl), Shereen has published widely in the fields of feminism, women’s movements and social movement organizing, and recently co-edited My Dream is To Be Bold: Our work to end patriarchy (FemAl/Pambazuka Press: 2010) to end patriarchy. Previously, she worked at the Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Center in Harare and the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town.
Natalia ‘Nata’ Escruceria Reyes, a proud Colombiana, joined JASS in April 2010 as Program Associate in the Crossregional Office. She is a graduate of the University of San Francisco (BA International Studies, Politics, 2009, focus on Sociology and European Studies). Prior to JASS, she worked at Human Rights Watch, where she assisted with research on HRW’s U.S. and Cuba/Mexico programs. She also held a variety of communications responsibilities, including: coordination and distribution of urgent press releases; translation of confidential immigration documents, and; transcription and translation of interviews with victims of political persecution. Natalia also interned at the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center, the largest refugee day-center in Rome, where she taught English and Italian courses to recent immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, and Kenya, aiding their transition to new lives on Italian soil. In her down time, Nata volunteers for the International Rescue Committee, travels whenever possible, and never stops dancing.
Alda Facio, a Costa Rican feminist
writer, has a long, distinguished history in women's human rights
advocacy both in Latin America and globally since the 70's. Facio was
one of the founders of the Women's Caucus for Gender Justice of the
International Criminal Court (ICC), the Women, Justice and Gender
Program of the United Nations Latin American Institute for the
Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (ILANUD), and the
global campaign for the Ratification and Use of the Optional Protocol
to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW), "Our Rights Are Not Optional!". Facio has
carried out dozens of trainings for judges, police and other judicial
officials throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Facio is an
advisor to various women’s initiatives including JASS.
Ralph Fine
has over 35 years of experience in nonprofit organizations, government,
law, and business. Currently he is principal of Fine & Associates,
a consulting firm to nonprofits and businesses based in Boston,
Massachusetts. Most recently Fine & Associates served as Interim
Executive Director of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, and previously, in
the same role for the Washington Office on Latin America. For much of
the 1990's, Mr. Fine was president of Integral Resources - a provider
of high quality telemarketing services to nationally-known nonprofit
and political organizations - including Planned Parenthood Federation
of America, numerous state chapters of Special Olympics, Children's
Defense Fund, People for the American Way, and the Democratic National
Committee. Mr. Fine also served as executive director of International
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a Nobel prize-winning
nonprofit organization dedicated to the elimination of nuclear weapons.
In the late 1980's, Mr. Fine founded and served as president of
Hemisphere Initiatives, a nonprofit organization focused on the
promotion of democracy and development in Central America. During the
late 1970's and early 1980's, Mr. Fine was principal owner and
publisher of The Real Paper, a weekly alternative newspaper distributed
in Metropolitan Boston. In his extensive legal career, Mr. Fine served
as managing partner of the law firm in which he practiced for many
years, overseeing its growth to over sixty lawyers. He has also been
president of League School of Greater Boston, one of the first schools
of its kind for autistic children. He has served on numerous boards of
nonprofit organizations and public and private companies. He has
advised many nonprofit organizations, including Boston Women's Fund,
Women Law & Development, Highlander Center and Grassroots
International. He is an honors graduate of the University of
Pennsylvania and Columbia Law School where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone
Scholar.
Daysi Yamileth Flores Hernández grew up in a barrio in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and has been a feminist since she was 15 years old. She is also a civil engineer, social media and communications expert, environmental activist, and a women’s and human rights activist. In 1998 she co-founded the Red de Mujeres Jóvenes de Honduras (Young Women’s Network of Honduras). Daysi is passionate about music, language, cultural ancestry, clean energy and the environment. She is part of the international advisory group for Alas de Mariposa and belongs to the Luna Llena Feminist Commune in Costa Rica. She is a proud member of Las Petateras and Feminists in Resistance against the military coup in Honduras. Daysi joined the JASS Mesoamerica Regional Team in November 2009.
John Gaventa
has worked for more than 25 years in both northern and southern
contexts on issues of citizen participation, power, participatory
research and education methodologies and participatory governance. He
is interested in linking participation to policies and programs of
larger institutions as well as in training and capacity building for
strengthening civil society. Since 1996, Gaventa has been a Fellow at
the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University, UK, where he
is currently the director of the Development Research Center on
Citizenship, Participation and Accountability. Gaventa previously
led the Participation
Group at IDS.
Featured
paper: "Triumph,
Deficit or Contestation? Deepening the 'Deepening Democracy' Debate "
JoJo Geronimo, based in Canada at the Toronto
Labor Council, is a union and grassroots organizer and popular educator
in the US and around the world. Originally from the Philippines, he has
made contributions to many pioneering popular education manuals and
materials and his training and facilitation combines anti-oppression
and political advocacy work. Co-author of Education for Changing
Unions, Canada: 2002.
Azola Goqwana started working on
HIV/AIDS as a student volunteer in 2002. She went on to manage and
implement the Cape Peninsula University of Technology’s HIV/AIDS
students peer education program, giving care and support to HIV
positive students. Since then, Azola worked with several HIV/AIDS and
gender organizations before joining JASS-Southern Africa’s Cape Town
office as Program Associate.
Mary Joan A. Guan (Jojo), a human rights activist and feminist, is the current executive director of the Center for Women’s Resources (CWR), a research and training institute for women established in 1982. Jojo has been an activist for more than two decades during which she has written about human rights issues in the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, worked as an information officer for the Children’s Rehabilitation Center, and as a researcher-writer for socio-economic issues in the Ibon Foundation. She was also involved in international work and film production at the Foreign Service Institute. In addition to her work at CWR, Jojo also finds time to write articles and make films on women’s and children’s issues.
Margaret (Peggy) Healy, USA has been a
human rights advocate for nearly 30 years. In addition to her work with
Just Associates, she is a Professor at Fordham Law School in New York
where she directed, until recently, the Crowley Program in
International Human Rights. She has carried out her human rights work
in many different ways and places over the years, beginning in
Nicaragua in the 1970's where she was a Maryknoll Sister working as a
nurse in poor communities. Within a short-time, she became an Advocate
with the Washington Office on Latin America. Her credibility and
persuasiveness made her a prominent opponent of US policy on Central
America on Capitol Hill from the early 80s through 1990, where she
regularly gave congressional testimony and advised key legislators,
particularly Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill. She was also a reliable
resource to numerous journalists covering the region, including serving
as an advisor to 60 minutes and appearing in Oscar nominated
documentaries. After getting her law degree in 1996, Ms. Healy worked
in legal aid in addition to clerking with a Federal judge. She wrote
and presented extensively on child pornography as a human rights issue.
In April 2002, she received the Louis J. Lefkowitz Public Service Award
for the mental health services she provided to survivors and their
families for several weeks following 9/11.
Lori Heise, US/UK; Founding coordinator, Global Campaign for Microbicides; Advisor,
Program for Appropriate Technology in Health; long-time gender
activist. She
is the Director of the Global
Campaign for Microbicides, a coalition of over 200 organizations
worldwide that mobilize support among policymakers, opinion leaders,
and the general public for increased investment into microbicides and
other user-controlled methods of HIV protection. For the past 16
years, Ms. Heise has worked to make women's empowerment an explicit
part of the global HIV prevention strategy. She has published widely on
the topics of sexuality, gender, and power and has served as an expert
advisor to the World Health Organization on violence against women and
HIV/AIDS. In 2000, she became the first-ever recipient of the
Presidential Award for Excellence in Advocacy from ASHA (American
Social Health Association) and in 2002 MS Magazine recognized her as
one of the “50 women who made a difference.” She is also
co-principal investigator on the WHO Multi-country Study on Domestic
Violence and Women’s Health.
Annie Holmes is a Zimbabwean writer,
editor, filmmaker, and trainer. She is a long-time gender equality and
gay rights activist who worked extensively in development in Southern
Africa for twenty years before moving to the US in 2001. After studies
in South Africa, she became co-head of Zimbabwe Publishing House's
editorial department, launched a Women of Africa imprint, trained
editors, and managed education and development lists. Later, she ran a
non-profit audio-visual facility in Harare with two other women before
starting her own production company. Annie has researched, written,
produced, and directed more than thirty educational and advocacy
documentaries, with print support and methods, for southern African and
UK-based development NGOs, integrating multimedia within empowerment
and evaluation processes. In South Africa, Annie won commissions to
produce seven series for the national public broadcaster's education
channel in the late 1990s.
New Books: A
memoir of life in newly independent Zimbabwe, Good Red.
Underground
America, oral histories of undocumented workers (associate
editor and writer)
Timothea Howard
is the Program Integration and Expansion Manager for CentroNia a community based,
bilingual, multi-cultural learning center in Washington, DC. She
is a community, labor and cultural organizer who served with the
American Federation of Teachers, American Federation of State, County
and Municipal Employees-Council 31, International Brotherhood of
Teamsters and as a campus recruiter for the AFL-CIO Organizing
Institute. From 1998-2001, she served as the Senior Organizer for the
National Organizers Alliance.
In Washington, DC,
Timothea was the Lead Organizer for the Columbia Heights/Shaw Family
Support Collaborative and the community-organizing consultant for DC
VOICE. She conducted organizing trainings for the National Organizers
Alliance, Black Radical Congress, the Northwest Bronx Community and
Clergy Coalition, DC VOICE, Mothers on the Move, LISTEN, Inc., the
Michigan Coalition against Domestic Violence - Women of Color Caucus,
and the Inter-Group Community Initiative of the Mosaic Foundation.
Timothea serves on the board of directors of the Nuclear Information
and Research Service, the Praxis Project and the DC WritersCorp.
Timothea is the National Outreach Coordinator for California Newsreel
and the film RACE - The Power of an Illusion a three-part
documentary series produced for public television.
As a working artist,
Timothea graduated from the Corcoran School of Art with Bachelor of
Fine Arts degree. Upon graduation, she worked as a painter before
entering the theater full time. Beginning with the Source Theater
Company under the mentorship of Bart Whiteman and at DC Stage with
Dorothy Neumann, Timothea worked as a stage manager, stage hand,
properties manager, producer and director for 11 seasons with Gala
Hispanic Theater, The New Arts Theater, Sanctuary Theater, the Kennedy
Center Opera House and Programs for Children and Youth, the National
Theater, New Playwrights Theater, Horizon Feminist Theater, Dance
Place, the Pola Nirenska Dance Company, the Primary Movers Performance
Company and Anacostia Repertory Company. Ms. Howard is a member
of Sophie's Parlor Feminist Radio Collective on Pacifica Station WPFW.
During the firs Gulf War, she hosted Another Perspective a
news program produced by the Institute for Policy Studies in
Washington, DC and Shasta Communications.
In 1999, Timothea received
the Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Fellowship Award.
Joanna Kerr, formerly Executive
Director, Association for Women's Rights in
Development (AWID); currently advisor to diverse women’s rights
organizations and donor agencies; Board member, Nobel Women’s
Initiative. Previously Joanna was a Senior Researcher at The
North-South Institute in Ottawa. She managed the gender program at The
North-South Institute for almost 7 years, where she started the Gender
and Economic Reforms in Africa Program (GERA). The GERA program is an
action research initiative that brings together 16 African
organizations to influence economic policies from a gender perspective.
She holds an MA in Gender
and Development from the Institute of Development Studies, University
of Sussex, Brighton, UK. She has policy research, participatory
research, advocacy, gender training, project management and monitoring,
writing and public speaking experience on issues related to the gender
dimensions of economic reform, trade and investment, women's human
rights, and women's employment issues. She is on the editorial board of
Oxfam’s Gender and Development, the Chair of the Board of Gender at
Work Collaborative, and part of the governance of several international
civil society advocacy initiatives. She has worked in collaboration
with researchers and practitioners in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
China, Ghana, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Côte d'Ivoire.
Mrs. Chan Kunthea is the Program Coordinator of the Secretariat of the Committee to Promote Women in Politics (CPWP), a group based in Cambodia. Since 2006, she has coordinated seven organizations in planning and implementing activities to promote women to decision making positions in public office. Kunthea has been involved in JASS activities since June 2008
Niken Lestari, JASS Southeast Asia Program Coordinator, studied Library Sciences and Women’s Studies at the University of Indonesia, and worked at the Convention Watch Working Group and Combined Resource Institution prior to joining JASS. In 1997, Niken was introduced to the internet and began promoting IT as a media tool for education and for critical reflection on women’s issues. In late 2007, she fell in love with open source software and joined Kluwek (a community for Indonesian women who learn and use the Linux operating system). Niken enjoys the confidence and experience she has gained from working with a mix of young and ‘senior’ feminists at JASS. As a writer – she began creating short stories in high school and has a particular passion for poetry – Niken is especially excited about using digital story-telling and critical readings of personal histories to further the feminist movement.
Marusia López Cruz is a Mexican feminist and
human rights activist who has lead and worked with numerous civil
society organizations in Mexico and Latin America, focusing on human
rights, community development, youth, indigenous people’s and women’s
rights. She was the director of one of Mexico’s leading youth
organizations, Elige, before joining the Consorcio para el Dialogo
Inter-parlementario which facilitates the interface between the Mexican
government and civil society groups and social movements. She is
currently the Regional Coordinator for JASS Mesoamerica where she
oversees the Petatera network and action strategies.
Dina Lumbantobing is a gender &
development specialist, trainer & consultant, with a focus on
women's economic and political empowerment and organizing. She
co-founded PESADA (Sada Ahmo Association), a Sumatra-based NGO
dedicated fighting ethnic discrimination and promoting women’s rights.
Since February 2005, she has been focused on the disaster area in Nias
Island following the tsunami. In addition to managing volunteers and
distributing food, healthcare, and clothes, Sada Ahmo started a 2-year
project on women's economic development through women's credit union
groups, training, health projects and political education for women and
children in Nias Island. Dina is also coordinator of the Learning Forum
for NGO Capacity Building, through which she does NGO organizational
assessments with a focus on management capacity. Dina recently
completed two books on the struggle of women in politics in North
Sumatra: "Political Labyrinth" and a guidebook for teachers on
integrating gender and reproductive health in teaching.
Patience Mandishona is a Zimbabwean feminist based in Harare. As Programmes Officer for JASS ally, GALZ (Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe), she works as a lobbyist and advocate, networking and providing services for the LGBTI community with a primary focus on lesbian and bisexual women. GALZ also conducts ARV treatment literacy. Patience holds a BA in Communication Science, and has been a part of the JASS movement building process in Southern Africa since 2007.
Maggie Hazvinei Mapondera joined JASS as a Program Associate, graduating from Yale (BA Comparative Literature, 2009, focus on African literatures in French and English). She is passionate about creative ways to address human experience. As an intern at the Refugee Law Project in Uganda, she facilitated an urban narratives project with women refugees in Kampala, seeing the efficacy of powerful personal stories in advocacy work. Maggie also volunteered with Zimbabwean refugees and asylum-seekers in South Africa as an intern for PASSOP (People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty), and spent a summer doing Theater for Social Change in Swaziland. In her free time, Maggie interns for the Women News Network, browses second-hand bookstores, and sinks happily into any book she can get her hands on.
Siti Masriyah (Ime) worked as a journalist in a national mass media outlet based in Jakarta before she joined the Indonesian Women’s Coalition in 2005. Ime is a mass communications graduate from Sebelas Maret State University with a particular passion for women’s leadership issues. In collaboration with Microsoft, she coordinated a program called the Community Training and Learning Center in five provinces of Indonesia. Ime believes strongly in the strategic role that technology plays in empowering the community. She wrote Women Go Forward, Women Win, a book that contains a campaign guide and tips for women candidates in the 2009 general election. More of her writing can be read on her personal blog (in Bahasa Indonesian).
Dr. Valerie Miller,
Senior Advisor & Co-Founder of JASS, has worked in advocacy,
international development, gender, and human rights for more than 30
years. She has collaborated with grassroots organizations, NGOs, and
international agencies from around the world as an organizer, trainer,
advocate, evaluator, and researcher. In the mid eighties she served as
co-coordinator of a national human rights coalition composed of
main-line churches and independent labor groups dedicated to ending US
military support to Central America. Over the past 15 years, she has
been policy advocacy director at Oxfam America, director of policy and
exchange programs at the Institute for Development Research, and
advisor and associate of a wide variety of organizations including the
Global Women in Politics Program, Women, Law and Development
International, and the Highlander Center. She has also served as a
board member of Cenzontle, a Nicaraguan NGO focused on women’s economic
and political empowerment, and Grassroots International, a US-based
group supporting social movements around the world.
Her doctorate is
in adult education and she has published numerous articles and books on
issues of advocacy, development, education, and politics including a
book analyzing the Nicaraguan Literacy Crusade, Between Struggle and
Hope, published by Westview Press. Her research on advocacy coalitions
and power dynamics provided important insights for her book with Jane
Covey, Advocacy Sourcebook and her subsequent work with Lisa
VeneKlasen.
Malena de Montis is a Nicaraguan
feminist with a doctoral degree in Education from the University of
Massachusetts. She is the founder of the Center for Democratic
Participation and Development, CENZONTLE and the Women's Development
Fund FODEM/CENZONTLE, both non-governmental organizations that seek to
support the economic and political empowerment of women with scarce
resources through financial, business, and citizenship components that
have earned the Central American award for Best Practice from
INTERCAMBIO. She was the Director of CENZONTLE for 13 years and is
currently on the Board of Directors of both organizations. She was a
pioneer in the Autonomous Women's Movement (MAM) and founder of the
Women's Coalition in Nicaragua. She has been a participant and speaker
in numerous meetings and conferences around the world and is the author
of various publications on issues of women and development. She served as the Latin
American Coordinator of the Women's Political Network (1995-2000) which
was launched at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.
Through the early 1990s, de Montis was a top leader within the
Sandinista Front and was a senior official in the Ministries of
Planning and of Education, as well as with the rural farmers
association.
Wala Nalungwe is a young Zambian feminist who is passionate about women's and youth organizing. As a Program Associate at Youth Vision Zambia, Wala helps to coordinate the Young Women's Leadership Academy among other programs.
Jacqueline Nolley Echegaray is a human rights professional with a focus on women's rights and reproductive rights. Most recently, she was Associate for International Programs at the Moriah Fund, a family foundation based in Washington, DC. Promoting human rights, social justice, and grassroots empowerment are priorities across Moriah’s five program areas; in 2008, grants made by the foundation totaled $9.8 million. Ms. Nolley’s work at the foundation included three program areas: Women’s Rights and Health, Guatemala, and International Development and Trade. Prior to joining Moriah in 2005, Ms. Nolley worked for two years in the Washington office of the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), a regional NGO dedicated to promoting human rights in the Americas through international litigation and advocacy. Ms. Nolley graduated from Northwestern University in 2003 with a BA in political science and history; a proud Peruvian and a closet Texan, she has lived in the District of Columbia since 2003.
Marivic Raquiza is an anti-poverty
activist and feminist who has supervised organizing village
organizations at the grassroots level, including women's organizations.
She has coordinated and done consultancy on gender mainstreaming among
NGOs in the Philippines and India. In the past, she
served as Assistant Vice President of the Philippine Rural
Reconstruction Movement (PRRM). She was also a Co-Convenor of the
BluePrint for a Viable Philippines, a platform for an alternative
governance agenda based on national sovereignty and expanding people's
participation in development. More recently, she was with the Global
Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) as a member of the International
Facilitating Team, was GCAP Asia Co-Convenor, and founding National
Coordinator of GCAP-Philippines, where she helped highlight the links
between poverty and debt, as well as poverty and Official Development
Assistance (ODA). She is currently a Co-Convenor of Social
Watch-Philippines.
Molly Reilly worked as a strategist and
trainer with JASS, coordinating JASS' Education Rights and Resources
Project on governance and public school reform in Washington, DC. With
a background in law, human rights and gender equality, Molly was the
Director of Programs at Women, Law and Development International from
1998-2001 where she coordinated a multi-country learning and action
program aimed at using human rights as an advocacy tool on a range of
issues at local and national levels. In addition to her efforts aimed
at strengthening leadership and transnational women's rights networks,
she also coordinated the documentation of experiences which were
compiled in Becoming an Advocate Step by Step, co-edited with
Margaret Schuler. From 1996-1998, Molly served as the Assistant
Director of the Global Women in Politics program where she oversaw
strategic grantmaking and capacity-building to groups working on gender
violence, migration and women's political participation. Molly teaches
a Masters course on advocacy for the School for Advanced International
Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. In the late 80s and early
90s, she served as a Legislative Aid and worked with the US State
Department. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, she has a law degree from
the University of Michigan.
Atila
Roque,
a Brazilian, is a social and environmental justice advocate.
Building on his close collaborations with many social movements and
NGOs, he is a founder and former organizer of the World Social Forum –
which began in Porto Alegre, Brazil before becoming global. Most
recently, he was Executive Director of ActionAid USA (2003-2006), where
he initiated an intensive effort to link with grassroots constituencies
in the US. Since October 2006, he has served as the
Co-Director of INESC (Institute for Economic and Social Studies), one
of Brazil's best-known NGOs, working with a variety of social movements
and communities on environmental, economic and social justice issues in
Brazil and throughout the region. Prior to Action Aid, he served
as the Coordinator for the Program on Public Policies and Globalization
at IBASE (Brazilian Institute of Economic and Social Analyses), another
Brazilian NGO which supports the advocacy efforts of movements and
citizens. He also played other roles within the NGO sector,
including as Director for the Brazilian Association of NGOs, the
International Coordinating Committee of Social Watch and on the
Coordinating Committee of the Brazilian Network on Trade and Regional
Integration (Rebrip). He serves as trustee for numerous NGOs, including
the Bank Information Center (USA) and the Center for Studies on Public
Security and Citizenship (Brazil). He has a Bachelor's Degree in
History and a Master’s Degree in Political Science.
Maria del Carmen Sahonero, Finance and Operations
Manager. Carmen comes to JASS with 25 years of experience on financial
and grants management along with operations experience with big and
small non-profit organizations. In 1992 Carmen started her
international career as a Supervisor in a USAID Project, later she was
appointed as the head of Freedom from Hunger in Bolivia, an
organization devoted to improving the quality of life of women in rural
areas providing microcredit and education services. In 1997 she became
a microfinance consultant for the World Bank and other international
and local organizations. Prior to joining JASS, Carmen worked for
Ericsson and CARE International as Finance and Operations Manager. She
has a MA in Financial Control from The Catholic University in Bolivia,
and also studied Microfinance in the Economics Institute of University
of Colorado. Born in Bolivia, Carmen moved to Washington, DC in 2007.
John Samuel is an International
Director of ActionAid International (AAI), leading the Governance and
Democracy work of AAI worldwide and responsible for managing the work
of the organization in the Asia-Pacific region. Previously he was the
Executive Director of National Centre for Advocacy Studies in Pune,
India. He has been actively involved in social action -- especially the
human rights and environmental movements -- advocacy capacity building,
research, and various advocacy campaigns for rights and justice at
national and international levels for the last twenty years. He has
facilitated more than two hundred and fifty advocacy capacity building
programs, from the grassroots to international level. More than 4,000
grassroots activists and development professionals from South Asia and
forty other countries participated in these programs. His primary area
of work is building grassroots advocacy movements in India and the
Global South. He is an advisor to a number of international development
organizations. He is the Coordinator of INASIA, an Asian network of
activists, writers, and journalists. He is the founder of
BodhigramIndia, a grassroots organization working with children and
women in the slums and Infochange, an ethical business initiative
committed to social justice and corporate social responsibility. He
writes on development, social change and culture, and is the editor of
www.infochangeindia.org, a web-based daily development news channel.
Barbara Schriefer, JASS Board Treasurer.Since 2004, Barbara Schriefer has served as CFO for the Moriah Fund, a private family foundation. Prior to that, she worked at the National Breast Cancer Coalition. As a senior manager in nonprofit financial administration, she has worked with staff, committees, boards, auditors, colleagues and consultants in support of many organizations’ missions. Barbara holds a bachelor’s degree from Washington College and a master’s degree in Finance from American University in D.C. Her almost 30 years of employment in the nonprofit community include working for two independent schools, a major trade association and a research foundation. Her previous board experience includes service on the boards of Christmas in April and a cancer foundation. Outside of work, she can be found at the gym or on the bike trails. She volunteers at the Signature Theatre and sees more than 50 movies a year. She’s also an avid traveler.
Sally-Jean Shackleton is a Cape Town-based feminist activist. As a JASS Knowledge and Communications Associate, she documents and shares JASS experience and learning in Southern Africa and beyond. A long-time facilitator, writer, and trainer in South African women’s organizations, most recently as Director of Women’sNet, Sally-Jean focuses on using information, communications and networking to empower girls and women, giving them the tools they need to tell their own stories in ways that fully reflect their reality. Sally-Jean is involved in the Sex Workers Education Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) and in the transgender movement in South Africa – she helped to establish the first African organization dedicated to transgendered people’s rights.
Ellen Sprenger, The Netherlands and Canada . Ellen is the founder of Spring
Strategies. Spring Strategies works to strengthen social justice
and human rights organizations, movements and foundations by helping
them grow, thrive and manage change. Ellen has 20 years of working
experience with non-profit organizations and foundations in different
parts of the world. In addition to working with groups and
individuals she also conducts research and develops tools and
frameworks for accelerated learning, organizational development,
resource mobilization, strategy development and
evaluation. Earlier, Ellen was the executive director of Mama
Cash, a dynamic feminist foundation based in Amsterdam. From 1992 –
2001, she held several leadership positions at Oxfam Novib, including
the gender policy advisor, organizational development advisor and
quality and control manager. Ellen serves on a number of international
boards and advisory committees including JASS (as co-chair), the
Women’s Funding Network, Central American Women’s Fund and the Astra
Central and Eastern European Network for Sexual and Reproductive Health
and Rights.
Ellen holds a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from Erasmus
University Rotterdam, an MA in Development Studies and BA in
Anthropology from University of Nijmegen (Netherlands). Her
publications include Where is the Money for Women’s Rights? Assessing
resources and the role of donors in the promotion of women’s rights and
the support of women’s rights organizations, co-authored with Cindy
Clark, Lisa VeneKlasen, Lydia Alpizar and Joanna Kerr (2006, AWID), The
Future of Women’s Rights: Global Visions and Strategies, co-edited with
Joanna Kerr and Alison Symington (2004, ZED books), and Gender and
Organizational Change: Bridging the Gap between Policy and Practice,
co-authored with Mandy MacDonald and Ireen Dubel (1997, Royal Tropical
Institute).
Martha Tholanah is a Zimbabwean feminist openly living with HIV. Martha participates in national, regional, and international advocacy, and activism revolving around the rights of people, particularly women and children, living with HIV. She is passionate about issues of women’s rights; access to HIV related treatment, disability rights, and functional health systems. A trained family therapy counselor, qualified in medical rehabilitation, Martha established and headed both the health program at Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) and the Network of Zimbabwean Positive Women (NZPW+). As a humanitarian program officer and United Nations Volunteer, she served as advocacy advisor to the Zimbabwe AIDS Network (ZAN). As a member of the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW) since 2004, she serves on the Community Scientific Subcommittee, an international community advisory board of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group research run by the US National Institutes of Health. Among her many other affiliations and roles, Martha was a member of both the Regional Advisory Committee of the Southern African Treatment Access Movement (SATAMo), and the Community Review Panel of the HIV Collaborative Fund, and presented three sessions at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico in 2008. Her research is published in Missing the Target (through the Treatment Monitoring and Advocacy Project of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition.) A feminist since her teens, Martha featured on a plenary panel at the 2008 AWID Forum and has been involved in JASS’ movement building initiative in Southern Africa since its launch in 2007. Martha was appointed JASS regional coordinator in May 2009.
Peter van Tuijl
currently works for the International Criminal Investigative Training
Assistance Program (ICITAP), a program under the United States
Department of Justice. ICITAP
helps developing professional law enforcement services, mostly in
countries in transition to democracy. Mr. Van Tuijl previously was a
Program Advisor with the Partnership for Governance Reform in
Indonesia, see: www.kemitraan.or.id).
His main focuses were the program areas concerning Police Reform and
strengthening the engagement of Civil Society in Governance Reform.
Before joining the Partnership, Mr. Van Tuijl worked for five years as
a Senior Advisor with the Netherlands Organization for International
Development (Novib). In this capacity he conducted supportive missions
to well over twenty-five different countries in Africa, the Middle East
and Asia, concentrating on advocacy capacity building, institutional
development and strengthening the participation of NGOs in governance.
From 1986 up to 1996, Mr. Van Tuijl served as Executive Secretary to
the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID). INFID is
a network of NGOs from Indonesia, Europe, Japan, the USA, Canada and
Australia with the mission to promote improvement of the situation in
Indonesia from the perspective of the core values and shared
experiences of the member NGOs. This included campaigns on different
aspects of human rights, law enforcement, poverty alleviation,
sustainable development, the autonomy of civil society and the social
responsibility of the corporate sector in Indonesia. During this
period, Mr. Van Tuijl chaired for a number of years the Dutch NGO
Working Group on the World Bank.
Mr. Van Tuijl graduated from the University of Amsterdam with a Masters
Degree in Modern Asian History and the Economy of Developing Countries.
He has published a number of articles in Academic Journals and other
media, on the role of NGOs, transnational civil society, human rights,
accountability as well as on social and political developments in
Indonesia.
New Book: "NGO Accountability:
Politics, Principles, and Innovations"
Featured
paper: "NGO
Governance and Accountability in Indonesia: Challenges in a Newly
Democratizing Country"
Lisa VeneKlasen, JASS Executive Director and
co-founder. For over 25 years, Lisa
VeneKlasen has been an advocate with and advisor to a variety of
women’s rights and social justice efforts worldwide. In the early
1980s, fresh from student activism, Lisa's involvement in political
organizing introduced her to progressive community-based leaders and
movements across the US and led her to Nicaragua where she worked with
the Sandinista government's renowned adult literacy program. Back in
the US, she became a community organizer, and eventually, the
media-outreach coordinator for the National Central America Peace
Campaign, working closely with progressive faith-based groups and local
elected officials. In pursuit of more direct policy influence,
she led 30 fact-finding missions of opinion leaders to Central America
and served as Legislative Aid for a US Congressional Representative.
For more than a decade
prior to Just Associates, Lisa worked with numerous women’s rights and
development organizations in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern
Europe. Through her work with Women, Law and Development International,
Lisa coordinated a program to extend the Latin American Committee for
Women’s Rights (CLADEM) to Central America, and in 1988 relocated to
Zimbabwe to coordinate a parallel 10 country training and networking
project that led to the creation of the pan-African Women in Law and
Development in Africa (WiLDAF). Building on that effort, she prepared
women rights organizations in eight African and Eastern European
countries to participate in the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing in
1995. From 1997-2001, she was the Assistant Director of the
Global Women in Politics program of the Asia Foundation, where she ran
an innovative multi-regional advocacy training and political leadership
project tied to a range of initiatives from inheritance rights to
anti-corruption.
Lisa is the co-author of A
New Weave of People, Power and Politics: The Action Guide to Advocacy
and Citizen Participation (2002), which has been translated into 5
languages. She is an advisor to the Nobel Women’s
Initiative. She holds a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard
University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Heather White, United States.
Founding Director of Verité, an
independent non-profit organization monitoring international labor
rights abuses in off-shore production sites. Heather is a long-time
corporate accountability and social responsibility advocate.
Carrie Wilson, Cross-Regional
Program Coordinator, is a Canadian feminist based in Washington,
DC. Passionate about reproductive rights and ending violence
against women, Carrie has worked in La Paz, Bolivia with the Gender and
Violence division of the Bolivian Ministry of Health on a project
designed to reduce domestic violence against women and has also spent
time in Santiago, Chile where she volunteered with Fundación Educación
Popular en Salud (EPES), an organization devoted to improving the
health and quality of life of women in poor communities through popular
education and community awareness campaigns. Prior to joining
JASS, Carrie worked for Human Rights Watch in Toronto and served as
Parliamentary Affairs Manager for Canada’s Minister of Foreign
Affairs. Carrie has a BA in Political Science from the
University of Western Ontario and an LLM International Law with
International Relations from the Brussels School of International
Studies (BSIS) in Belgium.
Shamillah Wilson, a South African feminist based in Cape Town, coordinates
JASS-Southern Africa. A former manager of AWID’s Young Women and
Leadership Program (2001 to 2007), Shamillah’s interests in youth,
leadership, HIV&AIDS, women’s rights and organisational development
have involved her in a number of networks and initiatives, including
the Global Fund for Women in Africa Advisory Council, Sonke Gender
Justice Network board, Future Genderation and DAWN (Development
Alternatives with Women for a New Era).
Everjoice Win started working in the
women's rights movement in Zimbabwe in 1989. Her first formal job was
with the Women's Action Group, as Deputy then Editor of SPEAK
OUT/TAURAI/KHULUMANI. WAG was and still is one of the leading women's
human rights organizations in the country. Everjoice's work involved
not only publishing SPEAK OUT, but leading the oganization's advocacy
campaigns, legal literacy work as well as liaison with government. From
WAG she moved to the Pan-African network, Women In Law and Development
in Africa, (WiLDAF), where she coordinated the Zimbabwean chapter, with
over 20 organizations. Her main contribution was to move a very new
network from its inception to a point where it became a strong
nationally recognized advocacy group. Through Everjoice's leadership
the network successfully organized and mobilized women across the
spectrum to participate in legislative and policy reform on issues such
as: land, HIV/AIDS, violence against women, inheritance rights and
constitutional change. Everjoice was one of the young African women who
played a leadership role during around significant international
processes such as: The World Conference on Human Rights of 1993, the
African Regional Conference held in Dakar in 1994 and the Fourth World
Conference on Women, Beijing 1995. After leaving WiLDAF, Everjoice
started her own consulting firm, Process Consultants, specializing in
advocacy capacity building and campaign design, program planning,
monitoring and evaluation.
Between 1999 and
2001, Everjoice was a Commonwealth Adviser to the Commission on Gender
Equality in South Africa. Her work involved training and advizing the
Commission staff and Commissioners on programs as well as gender policy
analysis and monitoring. Currently she is the International Head of
Women's Rights for ActionAid International.
Everjoice is involved with a number of Zimbabwean and international
oganizations working around women's rights, leadership and political
change. Notable among them is the African Women's Leadership Institute
- a program of Akina mama wa Africa, the Women in Politics Support
Unit, and the Women and AIDS Support Network. She was one of the
founders of the National Constitutional Assembly of Zimbabwe (NCA)- an
advocacy coalition on governance in Zimbabwe.
Read Everjoice's essay commemorating the 16th
year of the 16 Days of Activism Campaign.
Read
Everjoice's essay about Living on the Frontline.
Emira Woods, US/Liberia, is the Co-Director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in
Washington, D.C. Emira holds a BA in International Relations from
Columbia, a certificate in Public Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School
at Princeton, a Master's in Government from Harvard, and is ABD in
Political Economy and Government at Harvard. She recently was Program
Manager for the Committee on Development Policy and Practice at
InterAction, serving as a principal staff contact for advocacy at the
UN, the international financial institutions, USAID and Treasury. She
designed and implemented a strategic campaign around the Monterrey
Financing for Development conference, working with both InterAction
members and a broader coalition of Southern and Northern agencies.
Prior to this position, she served as Program Officer of Oxfam
America's Africa program, which involved outreach to the heads of major
international institutions and grassroots groups in the most remote
communities.
Ms. Woods has recently been interviewed on BBC, CNN, CBC, NewsHour with
Jim Lehrer, the Diane Rehm Show, on Liberia and US-Africa Relations.
She has hosted a WashingtonPost.com online chat and has published
pieces in the Nation, the Baltimore Sun, and the Rochester
Democrat and Chronicle. She has been deeply involved with Foreign Policy in Focus and
their Stop
Firestone Campaign about human rights violations surrounding
the rubber industry in Liberia.
Nani Zulminarni is a gender
and development specialist, facilitator and consultant with an interest
in community organizing and economic and political empowerment of
women. She is the coordinator of PEKKA, the "Women-Headed Households
Empowerment Program". PEKKA organizes women, helping them build their
vision for change, capacity, networking and advocacy skills. PEKKA
works in 8 provinces in Indonesia -- Aceh, West Java, Central Java,
West Kalimantan, NTB, NTT, North Maluku and Southeast Sulawesi,
reaching more than 300 poor villages and 10,000 families. Nani is also
the chairperson of The Center for Women's Resources Development (PPSW)
and a member of the executive committee of two regional networks - the
South East Asia for Popular Communication Program (SEAPCP) and the Asia
South Pacific Bureau for Adult Education (ASPBAE). Her main
responsibilities in the network are policy development, program
planning, monitoring and evaluation, and facilitating workshops and
training.
